I've been pretty hard on the good ol' GOP lately, but they might have some justified outrage:

Quote:The Internal Revenue Service acknowledged Friday that it had inappropriately targeted conservative political groups for additional scrutiny during the 2012 election cycle, an admission that set off a firestorm on Capitol Hill and could damage the Obama Administration.

Assuming all this is true (probably is since the IRS has apologized) it's very shady if you ask me. I can see the reasoning behind going after campaigns and money raising groups, but corruption with money is not a one sided issue. I have a feeling this will be made a bigger deal than it should be (as in there will be wailing and moaning for a long time) but I don't think a probe would be unjustified. I just hope it would be done in a civilized manner.

Also, I do hope the left acknowledges any wrong doing. There is constant banter back and forth about bias and all, but really, it is true to a degree. I don't think the victims should be the only one upset... unfair treatment is unfair treatment.

Quoting DeltaMD90 (Thread starter):Also, I do hope the left acknowledges any wrong doing. There is constant banter back and forth about bias and all, but really, it is true to a degree. I don't think the victims should be the only one upset... unfair treatment is unfair treatment.

If this happened, this is totally inappropriate. But if it occurred as described, it appears that it was isolated to one group that behaved unethically and is not indicative of any action on the part of the IRS leadership or the Obama Administration.

What disturbs me is that I am absolutely certain that the Tea Party and pals will accuse the Administration of exactly that.

They are already covering it up. The claim that it was just a local IRS office in Cincinnati or someplace who did it, in spite of conservative groups all over the country being targeted. I would not be surprised if the idea came down from Cabinet level, intentional or not (unintentional would be a Henry II / Thomas Becket scenario - "Will no one rid me...")

But an investigation is warranted. Mis-use of the fearsome power of the IRS is most definitely a crime - the question is who will go to jail - some flunky in Cincinnati or someone higher up.

Quoting DocLightning (Reply 1):But if it occurred as described, it appears that it was isolated to one group that behaved unethically and is not indicative of any action on the part of the IRS leadership or the Obama Administration.

What disturbs me is that I am absolutely certain that the Tea Party and pals will accuse the Administration of exactly that.

That is my fear. It is a legitimate gripe but if they start going after the President they lose their credibility (unless the President was behind it which I highly doubt)

If the GOP plays it like that it's gonna look like another witch hunt. I'm just telling you what it would look like from me... it appears the GOP keeps crying wolf and if the administration ever did something blatantly wrong, no one is gonna listen to the GOP. Either that or there really have been a ton of administration cover ups all over the place in which case that is starting to go into tin foil hat category

I've found that it is easier to suspect foul play when you've suspected it has happened many times in the past. Just as an outside observer, it looks pretty bad. But again, I think it would behoove the Democrats in at least hearing the GOP out on the issue

Quoting DeltaMD90 (Reply 3):If the GOP plays it like that it's gonna look like another witch hunt. I'm just telling you what it would look like from me... it appears the GOP keeps crying wolf and if the administration ever did something blatantly wrong, no one is gonna listen to the GOP.

So, let's say someone higher up in the administration actually used the IRS as their personal attack dog. You think we should just shut up about it? You think an investigation will magically appear? Especially how the State Department's investigation into Benghazi is itself now the subject of an independent investigation because the original investigators were apparently in the investigatees' pockets.

So if you are GOP (right-wing, conservative, whatever you want to call the opposition), you are advising us to simply "shut up and accept you are losers." If we feel that something was done wrong, we can either roll over and take it, or be accused of starting a witch hunt, crying wolf etc.

Quoting Dreadnought (Reply 4):So, let's say someone higher up in the administration actually used the IRS as their personal attack dog. You think we should just shut up about it? You think an investigation will magically appear? Especially how the State Department's investigation into Benghazi is itself now the subject of an independent investigation because the original investigators were apparently in the investigatees' pockets.

Of course not. What I am warning against is them coming right out and making huge accusations. That is what I think a lot of people are just waiting for, and if/when it happens, we'll just let out a groan and say "here we go again."

What I recommend they do is stay really neutral politically and just express the need to get this straightened out. Don't bring D vs R into it right off the bat. Probe it out and see where it leads. If they see it leading upwards, follow the trail. Once they get high enough, then ask the tough questions.

Does that make sense?

Most liberals will have a liberal bias... that's not wrong, that's just how people are. It's almost impossible to stay 100% objective. What I am (anecdotally) seeing are the moderates also being wary of GOP criticisms. Unless the GOP is completely correct all the time and the President has been the most sneaky, cunning president we've had, the GOP has cried wolf quite a few times and it's bugging the moderates. The 51% of the vote that the President got in November wasn't just Democrats, don't forget

Quoting DeltaMD90 (Reply 5):Of course not. What I am warning against is them coming right out and making huge accusations. That is what I think a lot of people are just waiting for, and if/when it happens, we'll just let out a groan and say "here we go again."

What I recommend they do is stay really neutral politically and just express the need to get this straightened out. Don't bring D vs R into it right off the bat. Probe it out and see where it leads. If they see it leading upwards, follow the trail. Once they get high enough, then ask the tough questions.

Does that make sense?

Fair enough.

Quoting AeroWesty (Reply 6):In the midst of all of this outrage, a little-known factoid surfaces. The IRS Commissioner during this supposed fiasco, Douglas Shulman, was appointed by President Bush. Oh dear!

Source: Tea Party Rejects IRS Apology, Republicans Vow Investigation

So?

And they are right not to accept the apology. Someone needs to go to jail. Presuming that what they are saying is true and it was some low level guys who decided to go rogue, they need to be made an example of.

I don't know if anyone here knows anyone someone who was targeted by the IRS. It's scary. You are guilty until proven innocent. They can freeze your assets, they can put a complete hold on your business, your business associates vendors and customers start getting calls from the IRS, which quickly leads them to stop doing business with you. You want to know a particular specialty of the IRS? They will go to your spouse and find some incentive (money, immunity, whatever) to convince him/her to tell them any dirt on you they know. Even if their investigation eventually turns up nothing (true in every case I know of personally), your life is truly f&cked. All without a warrant or even probable cause. A suspicion is enough. I've seen it happen to a couple of people.

So when the IRS starts sniffing around, people get scared, even if you have never done anything worse than jaywalking. ANYONE who uses their power at or over the IRS who uses them to go after political enemies or even the boy who used to bully them at school should be put away in a deep corner of a Federal Penitentiary.

Quoting AeroWesty (Reply 6):In the midst of all of this outrage, a little-known factoid surfaces. The IRS Commissioner during this supposed fiasco, Douglas Shulman, was appointed by President Bush. Oh dear!

The Irony of all this just bleeds of stupidity from the GOP. More OVERSIGHT Hearings because their weren't ENOUGH people in GOVERNMENT jobs doing the right thing, Kind of funny. Less time doing items that matter, such as making sure proper training and guidelines are in place to keep this from happening again . Instead they are going to wonder why the watchers weren't being watched and are sure to recommend more watchers.

The president placed his trust in a political appointee belonging to a party who'd rather see him out of the Oval Office as soon as possible, even before the end of his term. What does he get in return for his trust, but a fiasco to deal with.

Quoting casinterest (Reply 8):The Irony of all this just bleeds of stupidity from the GOP. More OVERSIGHT Hearings because their weren't ENOUGH people in GOVERNMENT jobs doing the right thing, Kind of funny. Less time doing items that matter, such as making sure proper training and guidelines are in place to keep this from happening again . Instead they are going to wonder why the watchers weren't being watched and are sure to recommend more watchers.

No need for that. You just need to ensure that those who use their government position for their personal agendas are punished severely. I'm talking 20 years to life, severely.

I guarantee that if this "apology" is allowed to stand, that we take the IRS at their word that the guilty party will be dealt with (slap on the wrist, or fired) that such abuse of the IRS and other government agencies to serve political or personal goals will become more and more common - regardless of the party in power. Such abuse must be dealt with "with extreme prejudice".

Quoting Dreadnought (Reply 10):No need for that. You just need to ensure that those who use their government position for their personal agendas are punished severely. I'm talking 20 years to life, severely.

This is a pretty unrealistic expectation though. Feds protect their own. This is like asking policemen to keep each other in check - nobody's going to blow a whistle on this kind of thing unless they are prepared for a sh*tstorm or otherwise don't have anything to lose.

If you need someone to blame / throw a rock in the air / you'll hit someone guilty

Perhaps too the IRS was trying to save it's own neck, since the Tea Party & Patriot groups often attack and want to destroy or pretty much neuter the IRS.
There were a lot of these groups and their local chapters in a short time, the IRS may have seen that a fast growing number of groups of a similar theme may be a new tax scam.
There are likely to be a lot more 'liberals' and non-white workers in the IRS like many government agencies, so some of them may have wanted to target them due to their beliefs. Were they so careful with 'Occupy' groups that sought tax-exempt status?
Sadly there is a long history of 'religious' groups that are scams, celebrities and sports stars who set up 'foundations' that do little of true benefit but provide no or little show jobs for relatives and friends and NFP's run with the tax exemptions to 'profit' the creators of them or really related to a profit making business.
I do hope there is a balanced and through investigation, but we also need new and better laws to better define NFP's for tax exempt status, caps on expenses, minimum benefits to the public and stricter on pay and benefits of managers and 'owners'.

Quoting Dreadnought (Reply 10):No need for that. You just need to ensure that those who use their government position for their personal agendas are punished severely. I'm talking 20 years to life, severely.

Can you rejoin the real world please?

We are talking about auditing those that are claiming tax exemptions. Sure it could have been more balanced, but from the way I see it, we don't even know what percentage of the new tax exemption request were from Conservative Establishments vs others. At the very least the IRS was being vigilant against fraud. Overzealous and misdirected here, possibly. However it falls within their job description to be skeptical of a bunch of applications.

Quoting Dreadnought (Reply 2):They are already covering it up. The claim that it was just a local IRS office in Cincinnati or someplace who did it, in spite of conservative groups all over the country being targeted.

The IRS office in Cincinnati was the one responsible for dealing with approving tax-exempt status for organizations all over the country, which is why it's involved. This wasn't the IRS targeting individuals in conservative groups, it was the IRS being extra critical of applications for tax-exempt status. Which doesn't make it any less wrong, but it's important to keep things in perspective - the idea that anyone was at risk of having their assets frozen or anything like that is, at this point, unsubstantiated.

Obviously, this needs to be investigated, and those responsible need to be held accountable. And at the same time, maybe we can shed some light on the whole process by which organizations get tax-exempt status, because that whole process seems to be a mess rife with loopholes and shady metrics for figuring out which organizations are really political organizations and which are really legitimate social welfare groups.

Quoting casinterest (Reply 13): However it falls within their job description to be skeptical of a bunch of applications.

To be biased? Should they be skeptical of certain minorities that make a lot of money because it's suspicious they make a lot of money? Can the left not be shady when it comes to money? IIRC, the President raised more money than Romney did.

Dismissing legit bias like this only fuels the GOP and it should. It's unfair and shouldn't be dismissed. We are by and large against profiling, why do we treat 'TP groups' as if they are shady criminals?

We don't know for sure that it was bias. While I don't think it likely, it's not out of the realm of possibility that there was a process set up that ended up disproportionately affecting conservative groups but that wasn't intended to do so. That's why there needs to be a thorough but unbiased investigation, and then after that's done we can figure out who was doing what and what their motivation was, and then they can be held accountable if there was willful wrongdoing.

Quoting casinterest (Reply 16):If there was a specific targeting of "Conservative Groups", then some folks need to lose their jobs. However prison is a bit of an overreach for someone making sure that folks are paying taxes in the US through documentation.

Ah gotcha. I just fear this'll be blown off by the left when the right actually has a legit gripe. Would like to see things begin to get patched up

Quoting DeltaMD90 (Reply 18):Ah gotcha. I just fear this'll be blown off by the left when the right actually has a legit gripe. Would like to see things begin to get patched up

It should''t ;t be blown of by the left, but the GOP is already making it a political issue, when it should just be an issue of common sense that "auditing" needs to be random or uniformly endorsed without specific targeting. The GOP however seems to be ready to make it a political issue, and one that detracts from the Government doing what it needs to do.

Those folks at the IRS have been there through multiple administrations, and not all of them are of one party. They belong to multiple parties.

The White House already said the felt the actions were bad and IRS also said BOTH parties were targeted.http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/p...tive-groups-2012-election/2149939/White House spokesman Jay Carney on Friday afternoon called the IRS action "inappropriate" and said the Obama administration supports a full investigation
But, the right wing media will ignore that. Much like they ignore anything coming from the White House. They set their own talking points, however false, and build their stories around that.

Q: Will the IRS hire 16,500 new agents to enforce the health care law?

A: No. The law requires the IRS mostly to hand out tax credits, not collect penalties. The claim of 16,500 new agents stems from a partisan analysis based on guesswork and false assumptions, and compounded by outright misrepresentation.

A: No. The law requires the IRS mostly to hand out tax credits, not collect penalties. The claim of 16,500 new agents stems from a partisan analysis based on guesswork and false assumptions, and compounded by outright misrepresentation.

So it's all just a coincidence that the IRS had 16,500 new hires waiting in the wings ready for work just 72 hours after the Supreme Court upheld Obamacare; after all it was considered a 'tax'.

Not sure why anyone is surprised by this. After all, the infamous Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the icon of the left, was notorious for using all the power of the IRS to target his political enemies (even those of the same party as him who had the misfortune of crossing him). Maybe this is what they mean when they say they want a new "New Deal".

Quoting AeroWesty (Reply 22):No. The law requires the IRS mostly to hand out tax credits, not collect penalties.

So those tax credits just hand themselves, is it? Naughty, naughty tax credits.